Denny jury shows way out of burden of justice

MIKE ROYKO

It's surprising that so few people see the bright side of the powder-puff verdicts in the Reginald Denny skull-crushing case.

All I've been reading are the groanings of legal experts, media commentators and regular folks who say they can't understand how that Los Angeles jury could have been so lenient toward the two thugs.

They say things like this:

The jurors repeatedly viewed the horrifying videotapes. Didn't they believe their own eyes when they saw Damian Williams take aim and bounce a brick off Denny's head, then do a joyous end-zone touchdown dance?

Didn't they see Henry Watson place his foot on Denny's throat as if stepping on an insect or some other lower form of life?

If bashing a skull and stepping on a throat aren't serious crimes, what the heck is?

Well, as regular readers of this column know, I always try to look at the bright side of things. As the old song goes, I accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative.

And I try to look at the big picture. And in this case, the big picture is what counts.

Apparently this jury believed that Williams and Watson really weren't responsible for their own actions because they kind of got caught up in the spirit of the moment, which was to go out and bash some white person because the cops had been acquitted of flogging Rodney King.

One of the jurors admitted as much in an interview with the New York Times. The woman, 22, said:

"They [Williams and Watson] seemed just like anyone, just like you and I. I see them just as two human beings. They just got caught up in the riot. I guess maybe they were in the wrong place at the wrong time."

How true. Had they been on a cruise ship in the Caribbean, in a Paris bistro, or at Disney World, it's certain that they wouldn't have engaged in any Denny-bashing.

Instead, it was their bad luck to be in that part of Los Angeles when the King verdict spread a riot virus. And being mere human beings they were swept up in the feverish need to rush into the streets and mutilate strangers.

Try thinking of it as a sudden case of flu. When the flu bug bites, can any human being be blamed for running a high temperature and suffering aches and pains?

It's sort of like saying, "The devil made me do it." Or the plea of a mother to a judge before her son is sentenced: "Your honor, he's a good boy but he fell in with a bad crowd."

Most judges and juries don't buy these excuses. But this jury appears to have accepted mob fever as a valid reason to stomp total strangers.

And that's what I see as a bright side.

The L.A. riot wasn't the only instance of mob violence in our society. Besides our occasional urban riots, we have gang rapes and gang murders. Mobs of racist whites have attacked unfortunate blacks who wandered into their neighborhoods. Mobs of racist blacks have done the same to unfortunate whites.

Cops have been known to lose their tempers en masse when a fellow cop is killed and to get in some extra whacks after they catch the cop-killers.

All of these offenses -- group actions of one kind or another -- add to the strain on our law enforcement system. People have to be arrested, processed, put on trial and sometimes sent to prison.

We know our justice system is already overburdened. Too many criminals and not enough cops, prosecutors, judges and prison cells.

So along comes this jury to show us a way to relieve the legal system of much of the burden.

"True, my lout of a client bashed that fellow with a brick, but he was just caught up in the riotous mood of the moment. Wrong time, wrong place. I mean, hey, everyone was doing it. . . ."

"Jurors, I concede that my client, this slack-jawed racist skinhead, did take part in murdering that minority fellow. But we hope you consider peer pressure. He was just caught up in group hatred. He's only human."

So if we start looking at mob-related crime the way the jury in the Denny case did, we can avoid the bother and expense of putting a lot of people on trial and locking them in prisons.